EthosData, part of the Moody’s subsidiary Copal Partners Group, is a global provider of virtual data room and confidential document sharing services. For more than seven years, EthosData has been helping businesses exchange critical information to support commercial transactions from deal-making to due diligence, securely and efficiently.

EthosData is a global provider of virtual data room and confidential document sharing services. For almost a decade, EthosData has been helping businesses exchange critical information to support commercial transactions, from deal-making to due diligence, securely and efficiently. Today, EthosData’s secure data room technology is used by tens of thousands of professionals. Its clients include eight of the top ten global financial organisations and four of the top five global law firms. EthosData is partially-owned by Moody’s (NYSE: MCO).

EthosData has a longstanding relationship with Sungard Availability Services. It initially relied on Sungard AS to host its critical systems in two of Sungard AS’s geographically separate, ISAE 3402-accredited technology centres with data backed up using Sungard AS’s Electronic Data Vaulting services. This worked well for many years but EthosData CEO Francisco Lorca recognised that only a secure and resilient cloud environment could give EthosData the flexibility and scalability needed to support its rapid growth. He explains, “We are experts in managing a virtual data room for complex client transactions and developing and managing one of the best platforms in the industry. Our business is growing globally, both in terms of the number of clients we serve and the range of services we offer them and our infrastructure needed to be able to support that.”

Sungard AS was his logical choice of long-term infrastructure provider: “Having worked with Sungard AS for a number of years we knew we could trust them to manage our infrastructure and deliver the managed services we need. This lets us focus on what we do best – providing a first-class data room service and platform to our clients.”

Francisco Lorca admits, “At first we were just dipping our toes in the water as the decision to move to this new environment was very significant for us. It’s no exaggeration to say our infrastructure is the beating heart of EthosData’s business so it simply cannot fail.” For this reason, EthosData oversized part of its specifications “as a comfort margin” and also kept its legacy infrastructure in place, both measures that have never been needed. A year on, EthosData is decommissioning its old platform, which says Lorca, “is proof of our confidence in the Sungard AS solution.”

“Having worked with Sungard AS for a number of years we knew we could trust them to manage infrastructure and deliver the managed services we need. This lets us focus on what we do best – providing a first-class service and platform to our clients.” Francisco Lorca, CEO, EthosData

According to Francisco Lorca, “The best thing I can say about Sungard AS’s cloud infrastructure is that I don’t think about it. It just works – all the time. When I think back to the old days of metal and tin it’s almost inconceivable to me that we ever put up with the constraints of a physical infrastructure. Sungard AS’s service offers all the flexibility provided by cloud solutions combined with the security, robustness and control of traditional physical infrastructure.”

He says EthosData’s customers have noticed the difference. “Our architecture is much quicker than it was before – clients tell us it’s ‘snappy’. In key growth markets like Japan and China our clients tell us they are very impressed with the speed of our virtual data platform compared to other data room providers.”

Lorca recognises that if EthosData had kept its legacy infrastructure the business would have “been forced to make significant long-term investments in technology that becomes outdated to increase capacity, deal with unreliable equipment, bear the capital expense of replacing end-of-life servers and have the sheer mental effort involved in managing it all.”

Instead, as he no longer has to worry about day-to-day operations Francisco Lorca has been freed to focus on the company’s international expansion in the USA, Japan, Australia and South America. He reveals, “Whereas before if a client came to us with a request that required us to significantly increase our capacity we would have to spend a lot of time and effort assessing and executing the expansion, which carried many unknowns and significant risks. That is all solved now. We can say ‘Yes’ with confidence, understanding exactly how this will be executed.”

With security uppermost in executives’ minds following the high profile hacking attack on Sony, Francisco Lorca believes that “People are going to become much more concerned about where we put our data. When there are no incidents you can keep your data in a shoebox and no one cares – until it disappears. Working with Sungard AS I have peace of mind that the worst can happen and we will feel secure.”

Francisco Lorca has the final word. “In many aspects we do not consider Sungard AS’s solution a ‘cloud solution’ as the majority of people would understand it because of the unrivalled resilience, security and control it offers. It comes from Sungard AS, a respected name that gives bank compliance officers confidence and gets us through the door.”

Business challenge

Fast-growing virtual data room provider EthosData needed a secure, fast and reliable IT environment that could scale up quickly to accommodate rising global demand for its services. With a client base that includes the world’s leading banks, law and accountancy firms, investment groups and blue-chip companies, security and resilience were of paramount importance.